What Do You Do If You Are Missing A W-2?

Have you filed your taxes yet? If you answered no because you have not received your W-2 yet, don’t wait until the last minute before taking care of this.

Hello, this is Noel Dalmacio, your ultimate CPA at lowermytaxnow.

Here are few things you can do if your W-2 hasn’t arrived yet:

1. Contact your employer if you don’t receive your W-2 one week after the January 31^st
2. If you have not received your W-2 by end of February, you can call the IRS at 1-800-829-1040 to confirm if your W-2 has been downloaded already in the IRS database. Before calling the IRS though, make sure you have the following info ready:
3. Name, address and telephone no.
4. SSN
5. Dates of employment
6. Employer’s name, address, and telephone no.

Once you provided all the info, the IRS will contact your employer directly to request a replacement copy on your behalf.

3. Prepare IRS form 4852 – if you don’t receive the missing info and cannot get a correct form from your employer, you can reconstruct the wages and tax withholding on Form 4852 based from your check stubs and attach it to your return. Form 4852 serves a substitute for your missing W-2.  After September 30^th, you need to check your social security statement online by going to SSA.gov/myaccount. If the earnings on Form 4852 are not shown, contact the Social Security Administration (SSA) office.
4. If you received a copy of your W-2 after you filed your taxes, then you have to compare the W-2 info you reported vs the one showing in the official W-2. If there were changes, you can amend your return to reflect the correct numbers by filing Form 1040X.

So to recap, if you have a missing W-2, make sure you take the necessary steps in order to avoid IRS issues

If you like to learn more, click the link lowermytaxnow.com and sign-in to receive my weekly blog.

Until then, this is Noel Dalmacio, your ultimate CPA at lowermytaxnow.com.